Introduction to North East Dialects

The North East region as defined within the Diachronic Electronic
Corpus of Tyneside English project has its northernmost reaches at the Scottish-English border
and continues from there to the southern banks of the river Tees in the south. Its westerly boundary is
demarcated by the Pennine hills and the county boundaries of Northumberland and Durham with
Cumbria. These hills, along with the three major rivers of the region, namely the Tyne, Wear and Tees,
and the North Sea Coast, which forms its eastern boundary, are the principal geographical landmarks
of the region. Its major urban centres include Newcastle/Gateshead, Sunderland and Middlesbrough
and it is the most northerly region of England.

There is a general perception within the rest of the British Isles and further afield that the North East
is synonymous with the 'Geordie' dialect and that the area exhibits a degree of homogeneity which is not
matched on the ground. Research has shown not only that there are indeed quite distinctive regional
varieties throughout the North East but that native speakers of these dialects are proud of their differences
and that older people, in particular, are keen to maintain them.

These distinctions are borne out of ancient migratory movements across the region stretching back to
Roman times when the term 'Britannia Inferior' was used to describe the North of England as far as
Hadrian's Wall in contrast to 'Britannia Barbara' beyond it. Tyneside was the furthest point north within
Britannia Inferior and Wallsend on the River Tyne's northern banks, as the name suggests, was its
easternmost flank.

The post-Roman era witnessed a new wave of migration spearheaded by the Anglians originally from
northern Germany and Denmark. It was they who established the region then known as Northumbria by
uniting the north of Bernicia (north of the River Tees and including what would now be considered Scottish
territory) and Deira (between the Tees and the Humber). The Anglo-Saxon records which remain from this
period make it clear that the Northumbrian dialect of this language could readily be distinguished from
the Saxon dominated varieties of southern and western England.

Bamburgh Castle. Bamburgh was the capital of the Anglo-Saxon
Kings of Northumbria.The current castle was established by the Normans.
(Picture: Alex Brown
2009 CC BY)

The late Anglo-Saxon period was marked by the arrival of Scandinavian settlers, though these were
concentrated in the area's southernmost reaches. This has important implications not only for the distribution
of Norse derived place-names in the region but for helping establish the demarcation of the contemporary
dialects of Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside which are locally recognised.

Further differentiation was facilitated by subsequent historical developments in these sub-districts of the
North East like the concentration of coal extraction and export in Newcastle/Tyneside, the fact that
Sunderland/Wearside boasted important salt and ship-building industries and the fact that
Middlesbrough/Teesside was at one time the biggest global producer of pig-iron. The demise of these and
other North East industries in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has forced the areas to further
diversify economically. Distinctive dialect zones have arisen on account of these different migratory
patterns, as well as the variable historical and contemporary sources of income, although Newcastle
remains the most culturally and economically dominant of the principle urban centres of the region.

These zones are marked by contrasts in identity, for example between the 'Geordies' from Newcastle and
'Mackems' from Sunderland, as well as at all levels of language. In this regard, the new book Urban
North Eastern English (Beal, Burbano-Elizondo, Llamas 2012) notes that a well-known Geordie joke which
plays on the fact that local Tyneside pronunciations of the words work and walk can
be identical fails miserably in Middlesbrough, where the two words are generally differentiated. Similarly,
while on Tyneside and Teesside the words make and take are pronounced with the
same vowel that is heard in mate, for many Wearsiders they have the same vowel as
mat, and therefore sound like 'Mac' and 'tack' respectively. Indeed, this is thought to be the
accent feature from which their distinctive 'Mackem' label originates (Beal 1993).

Urban North Eastern English also identifies grammatical differences across the North East,
and links them to differences in the migratory history of the northern, central and southern zones of the region.
Thus, Tyneside maintains its ancient links with the borders of Scotland in the fact that they both retain an
older English feature not reported for Wearside or Teesside which allows sentences to contain more than one
modal or auxiliary verb as in:

(1) They might could be working in the shop.
[Miller (1993: 119) - Scottish English]

(2) I can't play on Friday. I might could get it changed though.
[Beal (1993: 195) - Tyneside and Northumbrian English]

Likewise, the fact that Scandinavian settlement was more concentrated in
the southern reaches of the North East may account for the fact that while Teesside speakers favour
stereotypically Yorkshire features like a reduced pronunciation of the definite article the
as t', this is unheard of in Tyneside where the Old Norse-speaking populations had less influence.

The same can be said of the impact that Scandinavian loan words have had on vocabulary within
different sub-districts of the North East. The famous Survey of English Dialects conducted by
scholars at the University of Leeds in the 1950s recorded Old Norse derived words like beck,
meaning a 'stream or rivulet' in Durham and Teesside, which once belonged to Deira but not further north
in rural Northumberland, the epicentre of Bernicia where the Anglian form burn was preferred.
The same survey also found that the Old Norse word ket meaning 'rubbish' seemed to be restricted
to areas in the central and southern zones of the North East. More recent studies in Wearside and Tyneside
by Burbano-Elizondo (2001) and Simmelbauer (2000) find that it is current in both Sunderland and West
Northumberland where it is used to mean 'sweets'. Neither study, however, reported this form with that
particular meaning to be frequent in Tyneside.

What's in a name?

Geordie. A diminutive of George. One possibility is that this name
became associated with the people of Newcastle because, unlike others in the North East, they supported
George I and then George II in the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745. Another explanation is that George
was a common and therefore stereotypical name among North East colliery workers, or a nickname they
acquired specifically through their use of George Stephenson's safety-lamp, which then came to be applied
generally to the people of Tyneside, as the focal point of the mining industry in the region.

Mackem or Makem. This is often linked to
shipbuilding, with the phrase 'makem and takem' being seen for example as a reference
to the disparaging idea that while workers in Sunderland would make ships, they would then need
to be taken to Tyneside for the skilled tasks involved in fitting out and finishing them. Alternatively,
it may have arisen simply as a characterization of the distinctive pronunciation of make
that distinguishes Wearside from other parts of the North East.

Pit-Yacker. A term that was applied to the people of the mining villages of
Northumberland and Durham. The origin of yacker is obscure, with suggestions that it refers to a
manual worker as someone who has to hack or thrash (yark). More tentative is the possibility
that it is associated with yack meaning 'talk' or 'chatter', and therefore describes the jargon of
the miners and by extension the dialect of their communities, which was also called pitmatic.

Sandancer or Sand-dancer. This name for the
people of South Shields could be a straightforward reference to their position on the coast, at the mouth
of the Tyne. Another suggestion, which is in keeping with the pejorative views that seem to be a common
motivation in the initial development of these regional nicknames, is that it began as a comment on the
relatively large number of people from Arabian and Asian countries who settled in the town as early as
the beginning of the twentieth century.

Smoggie or Smoggy. This refers to people
from Middlesbrough, and sometimes Teesside more generally. It is an allusion to the pollution that
supposedly emanates from the area's industrial works, and especially the chemical plants that were
established in the early twentieth century. As with some other regional nicknames (e.g. Mackem) it
evidently became popular as a reference to local football supporters, and may even have been
coined as an insult by rival supporters, before being adopted by the Middlesbrough fans themselves.

Bibliography

Beal, Joan C. (1993) 'The Grammar of Tyneside and Northumbrian English', in James Milroy and Lesley
Milroy (eds.) Real English: the Grammar of English Dialects in the British Isles. London:
Longman, 187-213.

Copyright Notice.
Except where sources and copyright holders are otherwise indicated on the website, the contents of
this website are copyrighted in their entirety by
Karen Corrigan
(Principal Investigator of
The Diachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English,
the AHRC-funded DEDEFI project which
created The Talk of the Toon).
Permission from copyright holders must be obtained before any part of The Talk of the Toon
is reproduced in any form. Violations of copyright restrictions may result in legal liability.

Privacy Policy: Cookies.The Talk of the Toon uses cookies (small text files) to track visitor numbers and collect
other usage statistics for the website. The cookies are used only for these analytical purposes;
no personal information is recorded. Changing the settings on your browser will enable you to
block, control or delete website cookies. For information on how to do this, see for example the
AboutCookies.org website.
For details of the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) guidance on the EU's e-Privacy Directive,
see their webpage on
browser cookies.